Health insurance is a must for every household, and many insurers will offer coverage for a range of healthcare and medical needs. From adults to babies and children, health insurance can help to cover the costs of a range of needs. But what about those people who are experiencing hearing loss and could benefit from the use of hearing aids? Does health insurance cover hearing aids?
Health Insurance and Hearing Aids
At present, there are around twenty states that need health insurance companies to be able to cover partial or full hearing aid coverage for children experiencing hearing loss. However, this is not the case for adults at the moment. In some other states, if you have private health insurance, then it may cover adults for hearing consultations and hearing exams with an audiologist, but not necessarily cover the hearing aids. This is true for the majority of states, except for three states; Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Arkansas. If you live in one of those three states, then it is a requirement that insurers provide hearing aid coverage for adults as well as children.
So, to put it simply, checking if health insurance covers hearing aids does vary from state to state. Most will cover hearing aids for children, but not all will cover hearing aids for adults. Some will cover hearing exams for adults. There are plenty of solutions to this, though, if you are an adult experiencing hearing loss and who would benefit from wearing hearing aids.
Why Don’t All Health Insurers Cover Hearing Aids?
One of the reasons why many health insurance companies won’t cover hearing aids is that they refer to them as non-essential medical devices. For those living with hearing loss, especially the over 50% of people that are aged over 75 and older, would definitely disagree with that statement! Using hearing aids means that hearing aid users can better understand, better communicate, and feel confident.
Life can be impacted by hearing loss, but through the use of hearing aids, people can carry on as normal with their usual routine, jobs and social activities. Not only that, using hearing aids can slow down cognitive decline, especially for older patients, so it is something that really should be looked at. As people with hearing aids are likely to make a claim on their insurance at some point, a lot of insurers don’t want this sadly, as it can lose them money.
What Options Are There for Adults?
As has been mentioned, life can be greatly improved with hearing aids if you have hearing loss. There are still options if you need to get hearing aids and your insurance doesn’t cover the cost. For many people, this isn’t likely to be possible for everyone, depending on circumstances and your stage of life, especially as an up-front cost. However, the good news is that many audiologists do offer payment plans on their hearing aids. This means that you can set a monthly payment for a certain amount of time, depending on the total cost, to make the payment of the hearing aids easier for you, spending a little at a time.
If your local audiologist doesn’t offer this, or you want to look into other options, then you could consider using care credit for your hearing aids.
Care Credit
Care credit is essentially a credit card that helps you pay for your healthcare expenses, particularly for those appointments or devices that are needed when experiencing hearing loss. If you get approved for the card, then you can use it over and over, in order to manage the costs around your health that aren’t covered by your insurer.
Contact Us Today for An Appointment
One of the best ways to find out what hearing aid is right for you is to book in for a hearing exam with an audiologist. They can advise on your level of hearing loss and what hearing aids would be best suited to you, if needed.
If you’d like to speak to one of our team to find out more about hearing aids and the options that you have, get in contact with The Hearing Doctors today, at (630) 315-2899. We look forward to hearing from you.
